Cargo Of Death?

April 21, 1985

PARIS — Twenty-eight young prostitutes were found dead in a shipping container unloaded from a ship in Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the newspaper Le Matin reported Saturday. Their mouths were open ''as if they had appealed for air before perishing,'' the story said. Thirty-two women were found alive in other containers, according to Le Matin. Eugene Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Virgin Islands Port Authority in Charlotte Amalie: ''I know nothing at all about that. It sounds like a real incredible one.'' The story in Le Matin was written by a correspondent in Guadeloupe and said the owner of a brothel in the Dutch-owned part of the island of St. Martin imported the women from the Dominican Republic and sold them for $600 to $800 each.